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The international language of IT infrastructure

John Gentry, Vice President of Marketing and Alliances –

In November, I spent a little more than two weeks traveling internationally at a few conferences and to our international offices. I also got to spend some time visiting with customers and partners, and while there are regional differences and nuances between the organizations in different locations, there are a number of common threads that unite us together when it comes to managing critical IT infrastructure. As globalization picks up speed, regional barriers are coming down, meaning CIOs and IT teams worldwide are experiencing a lot of the same challenges and opportunities. There are of course plenty of overarching regional and cultural considerations to take into account when doing international business, and none are to be taken lightly, but from my perspective within a technology company, this trip was a nice reminder that the IT backbones of global organizations now have plenty of common threads.

Here are just a few of the key findings from my latest stint abroad:

Our predictions about IT regulation in critical industries are on point. Part of my trip took me through Barcelona for the Gartner conference, where there happened to also be several members of IT teams from the house of Parliament in attendance. Our own team had already been predicting partnerships between government and big business in 2015 to ensure IT outages in critical markets such as finance and healthcare don’t happen. Specifically, we expect there will be mandates for infrastructure performance management (IPM) platforms that guarantee systemwide availability at all times. What better way to check if our forecasts are on track than by speaking with the individuals who are making those decisions? Turns out we have pretty good instincts. The government IT executives I spoke with in Barcelona confirmed that even if they don’t legislate for this kind of regulation, they’ll certainly begin making strong recommendations to the organizations involved. This trend stretches far past Barcelona; at a financial services conference in Australia with about 600 attendees from financial institutions across the country, many individuals confirmed this trajectory.

There’s a shift coming from outsourcing to insourcing. Companies feel a growing need to more fully understand the criticality of their systems, particularly regarding developing technologies such as the cloud and software-defined components. The desire to gain greater insight into their systems goes hand in hand with a desire to gain greater control. Businesses are no longer as comfortable allowing their critical workloads and activities to be managed externally, as this practice opens the door for a less secure internal grasp on an organization’s technology. Management and IT departments are instead focusing on reining in their teams to ensure holistic internal understanding of their solutions; from there, these teams can use their enhanced knowledge of the company’s capabilities to begin more effectively differentiating their offerings from competitors.

Most businesses are now technology companies to one degree or another, and they’re starting to see similar threats across markets. While we used to see differences in the threats companies in different markets faced, that disparity is now almost non-existent. The majority of businesses now incorporate tech-based offerings, ranging from introductory initiatives like e-commerce and online support staffs to the more complex solutions coming from the traditional technology vendors. Since so many companies now require more advanced IT capabilities and high-functioning infrastructure to go about their day-to-day operations, there is a new commonality in the IT-based threats that all global organizations are forced to address. Businesses around the world now face challenges ranging from poor infrastructure performance to lasting IT outages on a regular basis.

Read more about how global businesses can prepare their IT infrastructures for tomorrow’s technology.